Pleased to See Me

'Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?' Mae West’s racy wisecrack could have been aimed at this book, which is packed with 69 high-calibre, sharp-shooting poems. Pleased to See Me bulges with boldly playful and seriously sensual treatments of everything you ever wanted to know about sex but never thought to find in a poem. Pleased to See Me is a sassy and unashamedly saucy celebration of fleshly pleasures by some of our finest poets. ‘These are very sexy poems not just because they are about sex,’ says Astley, ‘but because their luscious language is handled with wit and sureness of touch. This is the first book to show how the way poets write about sex has changed dramatically. As in so much else, the boundaries have shifted. Sex in modern poetry – as in films, novels and music – is treated freely and frankly, with passion, tenderness and a great sense of fun. Expect surprises and reversals as well as creepiness and unease, coupled with in-your-face exuberance. We’re talking strong language and strong emotion here.’ Editor Neil Astley caught the zeitgeist in Staying Alive, his highly praised anthology of poems on every aspect of modern living. Now he turns to more intimate matters, bringing you a spicy selection of X-rated contemporary poems for reading in bed. Pleased to See Me covers and uncovers everything we like doing with our bodies, both women and men. These are poems to have fun with. Read them to your lover. Make this your personal pillow book.

Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. His books include novels, poetry collections and anthologies, most notably the Bloodaxe Staying Alive trilogy: Staying Alive (Bloodaxe, UK 2002/ Miramax, US 2003), Being Alive (2004) and Being Human (2011), along with Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (2012). His other anthologies (all these from Bloodaxe) include Earth Shattering: ecopoems (2007), The Hundred Years' War: modern war poems (2014), and three collaborations with with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food: nourishing poems for starved minds (2008), and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets (2008) and In Person: World Poets (2017). He has published two novels, The End of My Tether (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005). In 2012 Candlestick Press published his selection of Ten Poems About Sheep in its renowned pamphlet series. In 2015 he guest-edited a special international issue of the American literary journal Ploughshares, its first all-poetry issue in its 44-year history. He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry from the Society of Authors in 1982 and was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books in 1995. He is a trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival, and a Visiting Fellow at Newcastle University. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.